Thursday, December 15, 2011

Not Impressed

12/15/11

It's time for the Feast of Winter Veil once again, but with a twist. For long-time players, we're used to the Greench in the Alterac Mountains being a level 40ish elite, and a pushover. Do it once to get the achievement, and don't bother with it again.

This year, however, Blizzard decided to make the Greench into a mini-boss, but, and here's the kicker, not in its own mini-dungeon that you can queue for. Instead, you pick up the daily quest in Org, then take a zeppelin or get a port to Eastern Kingdoms (I'd advise getting one to SMC, since it's really close to the portal to the UC courtyard in the throne room). Once you're over there, go to the Alterac Mountains, where you find a revamped Greench, boss level with over 3.5 million hitpoints. I suppose you could probably solo it, if you use some strategy, but as of right now, there's usually people killing him already, so you can usually just leech off their kills, and get the credit for the daily without firing off a spell. What I'm worried about is if/when people get tired of this extra hassle, and stop going over there, making it a lot harder for altoholics to get this done.

If you're an altoholic, and plan on coming back daily, set your hearth really close to the Alterac mountains (Tarren Mill for Horde), so you can skip a lot of travel time on your alts. Since you have to be level 80 for the daily anyway, you can get a Dalaran Ring, or a teleport cloak to quickly zip you back to....Orgrimmar. Aargh, this would suck if I had high level Alliance toons, since their teleport cloaks and Ring would only bring them quickly to Stormwind, not Ironforge.

Here's what I don't get. I've logged on faithfully for at least 4 years now to get my Winter Veil present from under the tree, which I later received a Feat of Strength for. Feats of Strength are achievements which are damn near impossible to get later on. Like the events that led to the Shattering, with the elemental invasions going on every few hours non-stop, it gives you a sense of history in your character. To have that given out to a player that only started playing a few months ago kinda defeats the purpose, don't ya think?

I guess I'm just annoyed at the multitude of backward changes to the holiday, and the lack of a present that I'd actually WANT (c'mon, a sweater, REALLY?).

I'm glad you like it, at least some people are getting some enjoyment out of it. :)

As for 30 minute queues....I can't think of any. Hallow's End, Fire Festival, Brewfest, Love is in the Air... all were very short queues, even as dps. I usually did Dalaran cooking/fishing dailies while I was waiting, and often I'd have to switch back to my weapons because my queue popped, then finish the fishing after.

I usually queued pretty late too, luckily 3 of my 85's are tanks (DK,Warrior,Pally), so I had insta-Q for them. The others had maybe a 5-10 minute wait. And the bosses take such a small amount of time (30 seconds or less for Coren) that the added time is negligible.